by Shay Wills
Can’t be a flake, piloting a snake!
Go nap of the earth, with your
Rockets and guns as hot as Satan’s horns.
Chill the beer for our return.
Dropping below leaf tops,
Bearing down with TOWs
At a hundred-fifty knots,
The snakes are out to strike.
That thwapping motor pulse
Like warrior drums scaring
Your privates right out of their uniforms.
You better fear the fangs we carry
Able to pierce tanks and bunkers.
Pilot behind gunner flies the slithering
Through dangerous grids
Hunting commies by the Iron Curtain.
Above the hungry monkeys in the jungle
The rotor wash smashes the palms.
Win the battles, lose the war.
It won’t be that way this time.
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An army brat, Shay Wills graduated from the University of Arizona with a BA in English and Creative Writing. He, with his spouse and son, live in Tucson, Arizona, near his two older children. Recently, he followed a different passion, earned his MS, and works as a mental health counselor. He has poetry appearing in The Abstract Elephant, Hive Journal, Wingless Dreamer, and The Closed Eye Open among others.
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